Portland Police Bureau detectives said a then 19-year-old father of two was high on meth and wandering around the Lents neighborhood with a group of friends about 2 a.m. on May 24, 2019, when 44-year-old Sergey Peshkov warned the group to stop looking for cars to steal. This started a bloody chain of events.
One of the men in the group has been convicted of killing that resident during what is called a car prowl. The man then fatally shot an acquaintance during a dispute in the space of 48 bloody hours in Southeast Portland back in May of 2019.
It took a 12 day trial before a Multnomah County jury returned guilty verdicts Tuesday against Michael C. Ramirez on two counts each of second-degree murder and unlawful use of a weapon. Ramirez, now 22, faces a lifetime behind bars with possibility of parole after 25 years for each homicide.
Court documents say Ramirez pulled out a handgun and shot Peshkov three times in the leg, arm and abdomen as the neighbor huddled behind a fence, before approaching and firing a fatal shot to the head. Ramirez then drove back to the scene on Southeast Reedway Street near 103rd Avenue shortly after, bragging to his friends.
The next day, May 25, police say Ramirez fatally shot 18-year-old Lorenzo Gordon as the two sat in a white van parked in a Centennial neighborhood apartment building, now known as the Spruce Park, at 650 S.E. 162nd Avenue.
Ramirez began scolding Gordon about giving a ride to someone Ramirez didn’t like. Investigators say the single 9mm bullet found in Gordon’s chest was a match with the six rounds found in the previous killing.
On May 26, police arrested Ramirez on outstanding warrants after finding him inside a stolen car parked at the Nadaka Nature Park in Gresham. Authorities never recovered the handgun used in the shooting but said Ramirez hinted to his mother that she needed to dispose of it during a jailhouse video call, per court docs.
Prosecutors say Ramirez was known to his friends and on social media as “KS Rico” — with the initials standing for the “Kill [expletive]” gang. Ramirez’s public defenders have denied that the killings were gang related. A sentencing hearing in this case is set for Sept. 16.
